Stef's Blog - a native London Southlander and unrepentant 'Conspiraloon™' who doesn't trust anyone, not even himself. Sometimes I take pictures. I also enjoy swearing immensely and think much faster than I can type, so each post comes guaranteed to include at last one confusing typo. OK?

Tuesday, October 12, 2004

Bottle of Diet Coke flees persecution ...

One Coke's journey to freedom and a better life

.There's one aspect of the asylum/ migration debate that has been subject to barely any discussion at all in the UK Media; the issue of foreign Coca Colas sneaking into this country.
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For several years now I have noticed that London convenience stores have taken to stocking non British born fizzy drinks, particularly Cokes. My first experience was about 6 years ago and occurred shortly after Labour's first general election win. I'm sure that this is no coincidence. The legendary Fishcotheque fish and chip shop on the Waterloo Bridge Road served me with a tin of 'Diete Coke', produced somewhere near Montreal. I didn't complain, partly because Canada is an English-speaking Commonwealth country that kindly buys our defective 2nd hand submarines off us (most recently HMS Widowmakers 1,2,3 and 4), but primarily because it was 400ml as opposed to the UK standard 330ml.
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But that was the thin end of the wedge. Since then I have been served with migrant colas from Poland, the Czech Republic and Turkey. OK, I thought, they're either current members or prospective members of the EU. If the UK population expects their citizens to clean our lavatories and change our babies' nappies, the least we could do is show some solidarity by drinking their sodas.
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Then, a couple of weeks ago, I was in a dingy convenience store in Rotherhithe. It stocked the usual range of drinks available in such places:

individual cans labelled 'Multipack Purchase - Not to be Sold Separately',

promotional cans with details of competitions that had closed 2 years before

bottles of Diet Coke with what appeared to be Arabic lettering

I was thirsty, so I bought one of the Cokes. Closer inspection revealed its country of origin to be Georgia; which was nicely aposite given that Coke's HQ is in Atlanta. I'm guessing that, what with 911 and the War on Terror and all that, the Americans haven't started producing Arabic-friendly Cokes in their heartland, so my guess is that that particular Coke came from the former Russian republic.
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What was that bottle's story? Did it come to the UK for a better life? Was it fleeing persecution in its homeland? Were there tiny little airline-sized 200ml cans back home in Tibilisi waiting for some of the retail sale price to make its way to them so that they could go to University? Or had impoverished migrants, short of hard currency, paid people smugglers for their perilous passage with bottles of Diet Coke? What economic sense was there in transporting coloured water across the whole of Europe to the UK? Was it smuggled? If it was smuggled how easy would it be to transport less benevolent items into the UK?
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I guess I'll never know..

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